I like beer. Love is too strong a word. There are other beverages to enjoy too. But some use the existence of beer as the proof that God exists and loves all. Personally, I'm happy to have a good stout or porter to pair with a steak. I encourage folks to follow their passions - in moderation. I've joked about buying stock in beer companies for the fun of it. I should have listened to myself. A local brewer has finally poured a nice one lately. HOOK is up 200% in four months. Cheers!

 

Investing and life will always be filled with missed opportunities. Even someone lucky enough to always guess right will occasionally have to pick from one while a simultaneous other passes by. When I graduated from college there were two jobs I wanted. They were my first two offers. That was surprising considering my grades. My aerospace degree made me a space cadet but I was not a stellar student. I could only pick one job. I landed in Seattle with Boeing and worked on big commercial jets. The job I passed up was to design the space station that is finally being completed.

 

Investing can be intimidating if numbers are the only things considered. Investing by the numbers may be the mathematically correct way to build wealth, though chaos theory suggests that may be unprovable or even incorrect; but for most individuals it helps to find something beyond the numbers to spark curiosity, interest, and maybe even enthusiasm. Otherwise, it would be like being told to spend time creating art, but only picking between sculpture, dance, poetry or painting by blindly flipping through an art school catalog.

 

For years I've said that I'll go back and buy some stock in Red Hook (HOOK), but only after I had enough to rebalance my portfolio. I figured that beer will always be here, but really I said it for the fun of it. Imagine the stockholder's meetings. Would they serve coffee and doughnuts, or beer and pub grub? I may not have missed my opportunity, but I did miss out on the first bump that popped the stock out of its doldrums. As an investor, that is a missed opportunity. Of course, in the meantime I have committed to other opportunities that could have moved just as much or more. There's no way to know the future.

 

I'm glad when I hear someone's enthusiasm for a company, and enjoy hearing their stories about owning the stock (if it was a prudent thing for them to do). I admit to a bit of disappointment though when they tell me about something they are enthused about, but they bought something else because a friend owns it. They didn't trust themself. A number of folks told me about Tesla (TSLA). Tesla's electric cars are uncompromising and redefining what it can mean to get rid of a gas guzzler. None of them bought it, and it may not matter, and may not be too late. The stock popped on the first day, but has been relatively level (for a recent IPO) for months. If they stuck with their passion, they'd be more aware of what they own.

 

Life is limited. Aspects of it may be infinite, or at least beyond our capacity to encompass them, but mortality creates a limit to life's time. We haven't found the rewind button yet. That's sad and true. I've had plenty of good ideas that languished long enough that someone else was able to independently invent and implement. (Open Table OPEN, comes to mind.) I don't trouble myself over them. Yes, I've lived in Seattle during the time when it was possible to be an early employee in Microsoft, or Amazon, or many other successes. Maybe that's why I, and many people I know in the area, have become comfortable with such misses. Maybe it's just age or maturity.

 

To live your own life, to capture those key opportunities, is impressive. To mimic someone else's opportunities is actually a component of community. Shared risks and rewards draw people together. But taken to extremes, using someone else's goals, especially if they are the fantasies and abstractions in advertising, is to miss the opportunities that empower a life. I can chase the imagery of credit card ads, or mimic stories of "successful" people, but every moment I do that is a moment I am not living my own life.

 

 

Do I miss out on some opportunities, maybe a morning kayak trip, or a bit of weather going by? Yep. But I also gain something that feeds two of my passions: people and ideas. The conversations about life, and sometimes money's role, are engaging, entertaining, and not to be missed. And if they happen over a beer, well, then we'll probably talk about other passions as well.